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ENH4210

Writing the child

H Scutter

12 points
* 2 hours per week
* Second semester
* Clayton

Objectives On the successful completion of this subject students should have gained a familiarity with a range of historical constructions of fictional children; an understanding of the cultural constructedness of the child reader and of childhood; and a grasp of the relevant theoretical approaches, especially of discourse analysis.

Synopsis This subject will examine historical and cultural changes in the representation of childhood and the child figure in a range of texts from the romantic to the modern eras. Prose fictions, some addressed to adult readers, some to child readers, will be explored for the ways in which discourses about the `child' intersect with discourses about notions of origins; gender and sexuality; class, social place, power and subjectivity; race, especially in the relationship between empire and colonised; the family and the home; education of mind and body; and growing up, especially with regard to the liberal humanist preoccupation with individual attainment of maturity/adulthood through suffering. The subject will employ poststructuralist, semiotic and discourse theory, and will have a feminist emphasis.

Assessment Two seminar papers (2000 words): 20% each
* Short essay (2000 words): 20%
* Long essay (3000 words) or examination (3 hours): 40%

Prescribed texts

A set of readings from Locke, Rousseau, Blake, Wordsworth, Lamb, Mayhew and Hans Christian Andersen will be available from the English department.

Barrie J M Peter Pan Puffin

Burnett F H The secret garden Puffin

Carroll L Alice's adventures in Wonderland Puffin

Dickens C Little Dorrit OUP

Eliot G Silas Marner Penguin

Golding W Lord of the flies Faber

Hughes R A high wind in Jamaica Penguin

James H The turn of the screw Penguin

Kipling R Kim Penguin

MacDonald G At the back of the north wind Puffin

Norton M The borrowers Puffin

Ransome A Swallows and Amazons Puffin

Stead C The man who loved children Angus and Robertson

Storr C Marianne dreams Puffin

Recommended texts

Aries P Centuries of childhood Cape

Carpenter H Secret gardens Houghton Mifflin

Coveney P The image of childhood Penguin

Rose J The case of Peter Pan or the impossibility of children's fiction Macmillan

Stephens J Language and ideology in children's fiction Longman


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Published by Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3168
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Authorised by the Academic Registrar December 1996